


Met Requirements

by Larathia



Category: Final Fantasy VIII
Genre: Community: fic_promptly, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-04
Updated: 2015-03-04
Packaged: 2018-03-16 06:59:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3478733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Larathia/pseuds/Larathia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"minimalistic in all aspects of their life"<br/>A musing Rinoa, alone in Squall's room.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Met Requirements

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scarletmorning](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=scarletmorning).



Rinoa always had a problem, when it came to Squall's quarters at Balamb.

On the one hand, the fact that he appeared to own practically nothing he wasn't wearing or actively using (which meant - weapons and gear) meant that even at their worst, his quarters tended to look a _lot_ cleaner than anywhere Rinoa herself had lived for more than a few days.

On the other hand, though, the fact that Squall had owned practically nothing for so long that the idea of _having things_ was alien to him...well, it was hard not to find something a bit sad in that. He'd saved the world. He'd been to the _end of time_ and back. You'd think there'd at least be a little display of medals, or something. A statuette. A ribbon. _Something_.

She sat on the bed (his bed) and really studied the place. She knew Quistis had trouble getting Squall to talk, but Rinoa rather thought that was because Quistis tended to ask him questions. Questions implied decisions implied responsibility for said decisions. Rather like taking a permanent, all-hours final, Rinoa mused. Especially if the person doing the asking was a teacher. Instructor. So it didn't really surprise her that Squall didn't like answering her.

Responsibility was something he was used to having dropped on his head, usually without warning. And often with a high and entirely involuntary price tag. And Rinoa knew that in his way, he felt responsible for _her_ , too. It had been her choice (well, her _insistence_ ) to come along, but that didn't really factor, not to a mind like Squall's. She'd come, she wasn't SeeD, he was responsible for her. He was responsible for a lot of things that would probably quite surprise other people if they ever worked it out.

Pursing her lips, Rinoa considered that possibly Squall's refusal to own much was his way of not adding to his responsibilities. He couldn't be responsible for a mess if he didn't own enough to cause one. He couldn't be responsible for things he didn't have.

And his way of dealing with his relationship with _her_ was to make it more hers than his. Rinoa didn't ask. She told. They would do this, today. They would go here. This or that would happen. Rinoa decided; Squall just came along.

She'd caught more than a bit of flak from cadets who thought she mercilessly henpecked their Glorious Leader. They didn't understand that Squall was _relieved_ \- in this at least he wasn't _in charge_. He didn't have to _decide_ things all the time. He could, in fact, _relax_. Rinoa wasn't entirely certain, but she had a working theory that around her (or locked by himself in this room) were the only times Squall felt safe with the idea of relaxing.

She couldn't give him gifts. That was one of the downsides. He needed to _not be responsible_ , and gifting him anything then made him responsible for its upkeep, as if whether he kept a gifted statuette dust-free was any kind of accurate measure of anything beyond his ability to dust. She couldn't ask him questions, because that made him responsible for the answers. She had to work out what was _needed_ without being given any of the usual clues.

There were a lot of people that really didn't like her. Mostly they were people who had expectations of Squall, and who therefore had trouble with the idea that maybe Squall was the sort of person who treated expectations as implicit obligations. Who had _even more trouble_ with the idea that maybe, just maybe, what Squall found in Rinoa was an opportunity to step back, and breathe, and be.

While at the same time carrying shopping bags, sometimes. You didn't have to sit lotus style on a cold mountain peak in the middle of nowhere to find yourself. You were right there the whole time, after all. The point wasn't silence or noise externally, nor stillness or motion externally, but what the landscape inside your own head looked like. Free of choices, free of responsibility for those choices, Squall could and had relaxed in the middle of a blaring nightclub or a raucous arcade. As long as he wasn't The Captain, wasn't In Charge, it was just as good as an evening on an empty beach.

Rinoa got up, ran her fingers lightly over the empty desk, bare walls. A chest for clothes, a press for his dress uniform, a rack for his weapons. 

And her.

Perhaps he _did_ have all he really needed, at that.


End file.
